Thursday, August 14, 2008

Next-gen Fighters and the Flow of Combat pt.3

In any game, it is important that each of the player's mechanics has a specific function that is unique to that mechanic. When mechanics aren't unique, or when they overlap with other mechanics, the core design begins to clutter itself. After all, why design a move that is only slightly different from another move?

When answering these questions, of course, the minimum degree of difference is taken into consideration. But pinning down the minimum degree of difference for a fighting game requires an unconventional perspective. Typically, in a fighting game, the only thing that matters is defeating one's opponent. Because the opponent is human (lets ignore computer AI for the purposes of this article) repeating the same move can yield different results because of the opponent's reactions. In other words, overcoming one's opponent mentally or via game rules is the only objective. Beyond this player dependent goal, fighters generally don't challenge the player or force them to use their mechanics in any specific way.

Establishing a set of mechanics that comprises the primary function(s) of a game as well as a set of supporting secondary and even tertiary mechanics is the first step to designing a well-rounded game. Well-roundeddesign is creating a set of mechanics that don't overlap or clutter each other in function. These mechanics must complement each other to create a method of expressing the spirit of the game.

It can be tricky to get a player to play using all of their mechanics (ie. in a well-rounded fashion). One way is to heavy handedly add abstract mechanics so that players are rewarded for mixing things up regardless of how unnatural it may be. Devil May Cry's style meter is a perject example of such an attenpt. Because the player character is over powered, the enemies/environments don't provide much of a threat to the player, and there's an excess of moves that overlap in function, the creators of DMC found it necessary to create an abstract system that informs the player of how styln/cool they're playing. The more variety players throw in, the cooler they are (or so the meter tells me).

The other method is by incorporating a decay system into a well-rounded core design. As players tighten up their game strategies, often times, they cut moves completely out of their repertoire. If a move isn't strong enough, fast enough, or special enough then it really isn't effective in a fight. Even in a well-rounded game, players might stick to only using a few of their best moves. While I highly value player freedom, there are ways to design a game so that the player is natrually/organically encouraged to branch out and use a variety of moves. Stale-move negation in Smash is such a design feature.

Stale-move negation in Smash is simply a decay system where moves are weakened when used repeatedly in succession. When a move is weakened, it not only does less damage, but it sends the opponent flying at a fraction of the distance/speed. In high level play, players carefully save their strongest attacks (kill moves) until their opponent is at a high enough damage or in the right position. By saving one's kill moves, the rest of one's move set becomes that much more important. This strategy naturally creates momentum from linking weak moves to strong moves to kill moves that highlight each move type's unique function. Such results from a decay system is only possible in games that are dynamic and well-rounded to begin with.

Designing an effective decay system is very tricky because the decay must be designed as dynamically as the core game itself. In Brawl, just having a move weaken in damage and knockback isn't enough. Because all the moves decay at the same rate, a super strong move is still quite strong when weakend to 80% of its full power. Furthermore, weaker moves only get weaker.

The damage and knockback of a move only can only decay to about 40% of their original strength. So, for the moves that are difficult to defend against and/or counter, stale-move negation isn't an effective deterrent. Damage and knockback may be the two main factors of attacks in Smash, but the game is far more dynamic than that. Positioning, animation lag, multi-hitting attacks, and stun are just a few factors that stale-move negation doens't affect. What's worse is that stale-move negation doesn't create interplay. In other words, I can't weaken my opponents moves without taking the hits. Take it from a tournament Smash player, willingly taking a series of hits isn't a good strategy. These two deficiencies hold back the decay design in Smash.

Some games have excellently design decay systems that are dynamic according to the game's core design and create interplay that uncovers the depth of the gameplay. Take Advance Wars: Days of Ruin as an example.

The red arrows point to the 3 decayable stats.

In Advance Wars every square counts. As players take turns engaing in warfare their units begin to decay. Every time a unit fires it loses a unit of ammunition. Every space a unit moves drains a point of gas. Every percentage of damage a unit sustains takes away HP. Ammo (attack), gas (movement), and HP (defense) make up the core mechanics of Advance Wars. And each of these stats decay in a unique way that dynamically changes the functions of a particular unit.

Without gas ground units can't move while air and sea units crash and burn. Without ammunition a unit cannot attack enemies or fire back when attacked. Additionally, every unit of HP determines a unit's attack power, defensive power, and for infantry units how quickly property can be captured. Because moving, defending, and attacking make up the bulk of the core gameplay of Advance wars, the decay system effectively influences the core gameplay according to the primary mechanics. In this case, the decay mechanics agree with the form of the game and are directly manipulated by both player's primary mechanics.

I've successfully run strategies where I force my opponent's strong units to waste their ammo by attacking them with several weak units (defend). Even a powerful tank like the one in the image above is useless without ammo. I've forced enemy sea and air units to explode after running them around the map until they ran out of gas (movement). And I've sacrificed small groups of units to push through enemy formations to damage their infantry unit so it couldn't capture my property as quickly (attack).

When the decay system is properly integrated with a game's core mechanics, playing around the dynamically changing situation uncovers a game's depth by making the properties, intricacies, and interconnections of their mechanics more apparent.

By property designing a decay system into a game players can be influenced into playing a dynamic well-rounded game in a more dynamic well-rounded fashion. When the core design of a game is constructed in the spirit of the game, "playing to win" can be synonymous with "playing for fun" or "playing in the spirit of the game." It is unfortunate that these seemingly contrary play attitudes weren't fused in Brawl's core design.

3 comments:

Didn't Guilty Gear (I'm only familiar with # Reload right now) have some decay elements?

I know Jam Kuradoberi could store charges for moves, which seems similar to ammunition. It doesn't force you to distribute your charges, but good players will distribute them to do the most damage (I think).

Similarly, Johnny has the coins which he uses to charge up his Mist Finer attacks.

While this mechanic is included in FPS games, I don't think it improves gameplay very much. It usually means saving more powerful guns for bigger enemies / bosses, or using rockets against tanks where they give you tons of extra ammunition anyway.

I think the best use is in Tactics and Horror games, which gets into what I was talking about Fallout 3 earlier about resource management. In some of these games, you're forced to conserve resources for future enemies because the enemies are hidden out of sight on the same level or part of some future level which you have to fight through before returning to a safe zone to replenish your resources. Alternatively, sometimes you can escape early at extra cost to the entire dungeon (sometimes just the additional travel time).

I'm not too familiar with Guilty Gear, but from what you mentioned, I'm sure it does have some decay elements. Whether or not these elements significantly affect battle strategies is a different issue.

Without getting further into Guilty Gear, the game is a straight forward "give the opponent damage" fighter that has several meters/abstract mechanics on top to balance things out. For these reasons, the game may not be well rounded to begin with not to mention the excess of abstractions.

The reason you don't think decay in ammunition doesn't affect FPS games much is because they're typically not very dynamic or well-rounded.

Because shooting doesn't have much interplay, it's difficult to create a set of other supporting primary or secondary mechanics. Usually, you're left with a melee attack and a grenade or two. Also, because these games generally give the player access to many guns on the field or the ability to carry many guns, the decay affects of using ammo is greatly diminished.

Perfect Dark does a great job of gun decay.

As for you Fallout 3 example, how can you strategize to conserve resources for what "might" come up later in the level? Sounds like how I played Resident Evil for the GameCube. I stored up so much powerful ammo just in case the worst came that by the end of the game, I had a huge stock pile of powerful weapons I didn't use.

For these tactics games, you get a rough idea of the size of a particular mission based on previous experiences. Basically, each level for a mission will be about the same size as the first level and you'll hopefully know how many levels are in the mission, where levels are often literally levels in a building.

Also, missions and levels don't increase drastically in size for each iteration, so you won't need a drastic increase in the amount of equipment you carry if you did fine on the last mission.

The fallout games and many tactics RPGs also have you travel to the missions and you face random encounters along the way. Then you have to leave enough resources for the trip back.

You don't get to the point where you're able to store up a ton of resources until the endgame, because you're limited by money. Also, different towns will sell different goods, so you can't pick up everything at once.

As for the actual action of conserving resources, one example would be using your different aiming options appropriately. With submachine guns, you could fire a powerful spread shot hitting multiple targets at the cost of extra ammunition. You could also hold off engaging enemies inside your technical range but outside your effective range, meaning you aren't likely to hit them. If the enemy is well inside your effective range, you could try aiming specific parts of the body. For close enemies, you could risk using melee attacks.Lastly, you could carry a backup weapon with more plentiful ammo.

X-Com had different levels of rate of fire and stances, which effected your accuracy, movement, and probability of getting hit, as well as body part specific attacks. I can't remember if the Fallout series had any of that.

I remember Serious Sam had some ammunition decay gameplay, with different weapons having various levels of effectiveness against different enemies (all handled organically, not with resistance). You would often face waves of enemies where you had to manage your ammunition over the course of the battle. Most of the enemies projectiles moved slowly enough, as well as most of your more powerful guns, that the game had some gun interplay as well.

Updated Critical-Glossary

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Critical-Glossary

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Alphabetical

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abstract mechanic

Some gameplay mechanics are completely artificial, meaning they do not make logical sense based on the form of the game. When such mechanics are privileged within a game's design, we tend to label these games as being "arcade" like. I describe these gameplay mechanics as being abstract.

It is a design innovation that applies to games that are played in real time. By taking the progression of real time and breaking it down in specific contextual ways, a new level of game design can be reached. This is the essence of asynchronous time, or async.

In music, Counterpoint is the writing of musical lines that sound different on their own, but harmonize when played together. How the melody of a song interacts with the other lines is the focus of Counterpoint.

Counterpoint, in gaming, is a word for the way gameplay develops past optimization by layering interactive elements into a single gameplay experience. When each layer influcences, interacts, and enhances the functions/gameplay of each other layer the gameplay emerges into a medium of expression that reflects the individuality of a player and the dynamics that reflect the complexity of the world we live in.

A measure of how the changes in the method of input are paralleled with the action in the game according to the form of the mechanic. If you quickly press the green button on your controller, does the game quickly press the button on the screen? If you hold the button on your controller, is the button on the screen held down as well?

An measure of how the game world responds to the action. According to the form of the game world and the mechanic, does the world react realistically? What is the extent of the properties of the mechanic? Are the reactions to the mechanic special cases or can the resulting actions continue to effect the game world?

Like Marxist criticism, the most successful Feminist critique of a game involves analyzing how the range of player functions that affect female characters directly or indirectly reveal the operations of patriarchy. When the player is encouraged or forced to play in a way that depicts men as strong, rational, protective and women as weak, emotional, submissive, and nurturing, then the game can be said to support and reinforce patriarchal genders roles and ideologies. Patriarchal values work to oppress women, and all feminist theory and criticism works to promote women‘s equality. A Feminist analysis can become more complex when finding examples of actions toward women if a game doesn’t feature any women or the game allows for limited interaction with women. Writing essays about such games often leads to finding evidence by absence. In other words, a Feminist critic’s central piece of evidence may be what can’t be done to women instead of what can.

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flow

How a game accelerates or creates forward momentum. This factor of gameplay isn't necessarily about speed. More specifically, it looks at how a game's interactions feed back into the player's options/experience like a snowball rolling down hill.

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folded level design

Level design that resuses a space with the second use containing an extra layer to the gameplay that builds on the knowledge and experiences established on the first layer.

Form fits function is a powerful game design principle that has powered many of Nintendo's greatest games. Using familiar visuals, games can use their form to communicate to the player. If there is a ball resting on a tee and the player avatar has a golf club in their hands, they better be able to swing the club and hit the ball. Otherwise, why put such things in front of the player in the first place? Keeping the form true to the functions and limits of a game creates the cleanest most easily enjoyable experiences.

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function creates form

When a game's mechanics inspire, shape, and define the creation of ancillary parts of a game. ie. story, setting, premise, characters, music, audio

Interplay is the back and forth encouragement of player mechanics between any two elements in a game. Put simply, interplay is where actions and elements in a game aren't means to an end, but fluid opportunities that invite the player to play around with the changing situation.

A measure of the degree to which input method matches the form of the game. If there's a green button on the screen, and a green button on your game controller, the form of the game is liked to the input of pressing the green button on the controller.

Like Psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism can seemingly critique a game by looking solely at a its fiction. However, both of these critical modes, in relation to videogames, achieve a deeper, more profound level of analysis when the elements of interactivity between the game and player are taken into consideration. Many Marxist critics of literature believe that film, literature, art, music, and other forms of entertainment such as videogames are the primary bearers of cultural ideologies. While we’re being entertaining by these medias, our defenses are lowered making us all the more susceptible to ideological programming. A Marxist critic of videogames looks for how a game supports or condems capitalist, imperialist, or classist values. Perhaps the best and most obvious place to look toward in games is the role and function of money. Some games represent money with actual U.S. dollars or some other form of real world currency. Others use fictional currency from bell, to gil, to star bits, or even points. What the player can purchase, how these items or services function, and how the money circulates within the game world all become important areas of analysis.

"New Classical criticism focuses on identifying a game's primary function/action that sums up all of the player's actions, functions, and abilities into a single expression. This expression can be thought of as the interpretation of the game or what the gamer is actually doing when he/she plays. Sometimes the primary function can be encapsulated in a single word. For example, the primary function of the Super Mario platforming series is "jump". After the primary function is identified, the New Classical critic then looks at a game's formal elements to analyze how they promote the primary function. The formal elements include Sound, Music, Art style, Story, Graphics, level design, enemies, etc. Because the New Classical critic privileges interactivity over passivity (especially when focused into a limited number of rules and actions), such a critic is only concerned with how these elements shape the gameplay experience, and assumes that any formal element in a game is only meaningful when it supports the primary function and exists in a lower state of priority to that function. In other words, elements like story can't be more stressed and more important to a game than the gameplay. Even if a game is designed according to the conventions and assumptions of Western game design, it can still be critiqued in the Classical mode."

A type of multi-fold level design where the creases and layers are so flexible and/or dynamic that considering the possibilities within a single level are interconnected and complex. Considering the shape created from a multi-fold level is similar to observing an origami figure.

For those who aren’t careful, a Psychoanalytic critique of a game appears to only be concerned with the fiction of a game and the relationship of the characters. Unless the game is Psychonauts, most games seem to have little to nothing to do with the human psyche. Neglecting how the game fiction and the gameplay (or game rules) come together to create the Psychological work in a game is a common pitfall. Another easy pitfall is to get wrapped up in Psychoanalyzing the developers of the game, or what may be infinitely more embarrassing, accidentally analyzing one’s own psychological state while trying to pass it off as an analysis of the game. Though it is true that the fiction of a game is an important part of any Psychoanalytic analysis, the gameplay is where the most profound sources of material because the interactivity of the game can influence and transform the player in more powerfully subtle ways than a passive medium.

The set of mechanics that do not make up the set of primary mechanics. These mechanics usually aid and help shape the primary mechanic.

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sections (sub-sections)

All games can be broken down into sub-sections or sections. Whether a game is broken down by rooms, loading sections, cut scenes, stages, levels, rounds, or turns, if a game has a mechanic that is repeated, then it can be divided into sections.

Structures are probably the most recognizable feature of videogames. Because structures create the foundation for the game rules and player to learn these rules, analyzing structure develops a clearer insight into how a game works at its core. We're all familiar with the structures of genre. Any gamer can instantly recognize a first person shooter like Halo from a puzzle game like Tetris. Each gaming genre has a certain look to it that is the result of the gameplay structures. Like with any genre, the degree to which the conventions are followed or deviated from varies greatly from game to game. Recognizing a game's structure is an acute way of talking about how a game works in or outside of its genre.

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suspension

In counterpoint, when a game element or game idea is offset form the established pattern of game ideas to create scenarios where the element/idea can carry over and influence other game ideas.

...about Critical-Gaming

We have come to a point where how we talk about video games is insufficient in expressing how we feel and think about them. With each year comes increasingly complex games, yet we are still, for the most part, writing and talking about games on a shallow consumer level.

It is time to start thinking and writing critically about games. However, before we can do this, we must approach gaming from a critical mode or mindset. To do this, we must first understand of how the different parts of a game work together (game design). Unfortunately, many of the who have experience in this area spend their time making video games. Beyond that, the body of knowledge that does exist is scattered at best. For this reason, it is hard for a thorough understanding of game design and critique to become widespread.

I have started this blog in efforts to inform both gamers and non-gamers of the complexities of gaming and how it compares to any other art form (music, literature, movies). Using literary critical theory and music theory as a starting point, I have developed a comprehensive set of critical modes for video game critique. By writing in these critical modes, and by critiquing other video game reviews, I hope to raise our understanding and expectations of video game journalism, critique, and even video games themselves.

We already have a loose idea of what it means to be a core gamer. A casual gamer. And a hardcore gamer. I hope with the right mindset, we can become critical-gamers, who don't shun our fellow gamers for thinking deeply about games but embrace the change we wish to see in the world.